howma.com logo
 
Learning Chinese is a pretty daunting task. The tones, the ambiguous tenses, the multi-use particles…it can be extremely frustrating at times. And Chinese people recognize that, so when they see someone working hard to learn their language, they’re usually more than happy to help out. They’re also usually really encouraging about students’ efforts. Well that’s all fine and dandy if you have lots of Chinese people around you, but what about people who live in Podunk, South Dakota? How can they get feedback on their Chinese to help them improve their pronunciation and grammar? Thanks to the wonders of the internet, that help isn’t too hard to find.
 
A new site that I think has a pretty cool idea is Howma.com. It’s designed to help Chinese learners improve their pronunciation using feedback from the site’s community. Basically, here’s how it works: you record yourself saying one of the phrases they have on the site, and it gets posted for the community to listen to. Then, site users can rate your pronunciation on a 5-star scale and leave comments on how to make it better. If you’re too timid to record yourself so that others can listen and critique you, you can always pick someone with a high rating and mimic their pronunciation. Of course, as you practice saying the phrases available on the site, your vocabulary and grammar will improve, too. And Chinese people learning English have the same features available to them on the site as well. So everybody benefits. Pretty cool idea, huh? There’s also an interesting blog with some helpful tips and information for learning Chinese, including a post about different programs for learning Chinese via Youtube videos. Howma.com is in beta right now, so expect some glitches and strangeness, but I think the idea is a good one, and if enough people support it, it could be a big help to a lot of isolated self-learners out there.